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" I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me. "
Phil Klay
Me
Critical
Studying
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" War is too strange to process alone. "
Phil Klay
Strange
War
Too
" There's a wide spectrum between a Navy SEAL hero-killer and a traumatized victim, but those are the archetypes - hashed and rehashed in the media, in popular culture, in the minds of people with a lot of preconceived notions but not much else. "
Phil Klay
Culture
People
Media
" I doubt there's anything you could say to Donald Rumsfeld that would puncture the armor of his narcissism. "
Phil Klay
You
Say
Anything
" Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex. "
Phil Klay
Culture
War
Experience
" I was a public affairs officer. I worked with the media, but I didn't just stay at my desk. I assisted in military duties, travelled around Anbar province, hung out with a wide variety of Marines. "
Phil Klay
Media
Marines
Desk
" War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war. "
Phil Klay
War
Politics
Experience
" The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went. "
Phil Klay
Argument
Military
War
" The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment. "
Phil Klay
Memories
Painful
Judgment
" I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and then deposit them back on the home front. "
Phil Klay
Courage
Integrity
Great
" We're so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we forget those terms might mean something very specific. "
Phil Klay
Forget
Used
Speech
" I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love. "
Phil Klay
Time
Long
Long Time
" Writing 'Redeployment' shook me in ways I never expected. "
Phil Klay
Writing
Expected
Me
" For me, leaving the Marine Corps was more disorienting than returning home. "
Phil Klay
Me
Than
More
" Responsibility and accountability is a big part of being in the military. "
Phil Klay
Accountability
Military
Responsibility
" If you write a novel where war is nothing but hell and no one experiences excitement or cracks a dark joke, then you're not actually admitting the full experience. "
Phil Klay
Experience
You
War
" One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment. "
Phil Klay
Policy
Understand
People
" I didn't want to write a 'this is how it is' Iraq book, because the Iraq War is an intensely complicated variety of things. "
Phil Klay
War
Complicated
Want
" In the Marine Corps, you meet this really broad segment of the country; you're working with people from all kinds of backgrounds. And it exposes you to the American military, particularly the American military at war. "
Phil Klay
Kinds
You
American
" Even if torture works, what is the point of 'defending' America using a tactic that is a fundamental violation of what America ought to mean? "
Phil Klay
Defending
America
Mean
" If you're going to write about war, the ugly side is inevitable. Suffering and death are obviously part of war. "
Phil Klay
Side
Death
Suffering
" I always wrote - not about war, necessarily, but I always wrote stories. I tried to write while I was in Iraq. It's not really - I didn't do a very good job, and not about war. "
Phil Klay
Good Job
Write
War
" People lie to themselves all the time about what they've been through and what it means - I'm no exception. But you write those lies down - lies that really matter to you and that are really painful to let go of because they've become a part of who you are - and they don't work. "
Phil Klay
Work
You
Down
" I love opera. I love jazz, especially Mingus. This makes me sound highbrow. I'm not. "
Phil Klay
Jazz
Sound
Opera
" We're told that when we remember, the same parts of our brain light up as when we experienced the event we're remembering. Your brain lives through it again. "
Phil Klay
Brain
Up
Remembering
" I went straight from the Marine Corps to the MFA. The way that you would express things among Marines is somewhat different than the way you're supposed to express things in a creative-writing workshop. "
Phil Klay
Way
You
Marine Corps
" Certainly, when I'd left Iraq back in 2008, I'd been proud of my service, but whether we'd been successful or not was still an open question. "
Phil Klay
Successful
Service
Back
" It's very strange getting out of the military, when you've lived in Iraq, and people you know are going overseas again and again. Some of them are getting injured. "
Phil Klay
You
Military
Know
" People should be able to tell stories that are important to them to try and understand what they mean. I don't think you figure anything out on your own. Certainly not war stories. "
Phil Klay
People
Think
Try
" I write in coffee shops, libraries, parks, museums. I get antsy and then get on my bike and go someplace else, letting the ideas spin around in my head as I dodge taxis. "
Phil Klay
Coffee
Museums
Ideas
" In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it. "
Phil Klay
Able
Write
You